I was forced to "talk to them" when they were still federated and it was horrible. It's totally fine to have a political opinion, but it's another to turn every comment section into a warzone. Even responses to random memes would somehow turn into a political debate and due to their high user count and black and white thinking this quickly turned into them attacking anyone who disagreed even slightly with their views. Hexbear were making sure that anyone who isn't a tankie had no reason to be on Lemmy because they'd be haunted every time they'd share their opinion.

I'm all for having a normal exchange of thoughts, but this is like sitting in a room with 90% extreme leftists and getting swarmed and called a stupid lib the moment you dare to introduce some nuance. I'm still more left wing than probably 70% or 80% of the Netherlands and yet I'd relate better to the average center-right voter than to these nuts